


sympathy for the devil

by NoirSongbird



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Lovers, Gratuitous Lucifer Allegories, M/M, Written Pre-Season 5, of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-25 23:30:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13845315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoirSongbird/pseuds/NoirSongbird
Summary: Lance does not trust Lotor. He reminds him too much of a particular Biblical figure for that.That doesn't make him any less beautiful.





	sympathy for the devil

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so! I started this when the S5 trailer dropped, because Lance's line about a "Deal with the devil" set my brain going and....look. I love Lucifer allusions. So I banged out the last of it tonight, before the S5 drop, and HERE WE ARE.

Lance didn't really consider himself all that religious. Not the way his _abuela,_ who went to Mass three times a week, was, certainly. He went to Mass when he had to, and he liked it well enough, and sometimes he'd pray a little when he flew, but he was pretty sure that during some of the maneuvers they executed in the Lions, pretty much everyone was calling on some sort of higher power for help.

So, yeah, not exactly super religious, but he'd absorbed a lot over the years, and that _definitely_ included absorbing _plenty_ about Lucifer, best and most beautiful of the angels, Fallen because he was too proud to kneel to humanity.

Staring at Prince Lotor as he stepped onto the bridge of the castleship, Lance was half-certain he was staring at Lucifer himself, incarnate in flesh. Lotor certainly had the _beautiful_ part down; he looked more like a purple Altean, with his delicate elfin features and long white hair, than he did the terrifying son of Emperor Zarkon, the monster in control of the known universe.

"So, Paladins of Voltron," he said, and his voice was like honeyed wine, smooth and sweet and intoxicating, and Lance was really, _really_ feeling that whole Lucifer thing, "I believe the time has come to discuss our alliance."

He talked like someone who was used to wearing authority on his shoulders. He stood like it, too, and Lance wasn't sure how he felt about that. Even after he was exiled a second time, made a kill-on-sight target, Lotor still looked every bit the Prince, like none of that had affected him except where he wanted it to.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lance could see Keith, tense and hunched in on himself. Allura looked less than happy, too, and so did Pidge. He wasn't sure how he felt yet, except that a whole lot of his instincts were screaming _danger_.

 _Dangerous,_ he'd forced himself to learn, didn't mean _bad._ Half the things he did in Red were incredibly dangerous, but he did them anyway. Besides, Lotor deserved a chance. It couldn't be easy, coming to them. They were probably his last option, and everyone deserved to have a chance to make themselves better, right? The road out of Hell wasn't exactly easy, and maybe this devil deserved a little sympathy.

 

* * *

 

Not that Lotor made it easy. Sure, he wasn't exactly an ice prince, he had plenty of passion and fire and dramatics (and oh, hell, Lance was drawn like crazy to that particular flame, but he refused to admit it because that was dangerous and he was _definitely_ going to get burned) but Lance was almost certain he was holding back more than he was opening up about. Like every flare of temper or show of emotion was a calculated cover, because there was something underneath that he wanted absolutely no one to see ever.

But that was the danger, wasn't it? Assuming there was something soft and sensitive underneath. Lance had known enough jerks who'd wanted him to make that exact assumption, and he'd been burned by them enough to have thought he'd stopped doing that, except apparently all it took for him to start doing it again was for the jerk to be the right _kind_ of jerk.

Because here he was, knowing everything he knew about the Galra Empire, about Zarkon, about Haggar, about the kind of people who raised Lotor and the things he’d done, and Lance was still looking for any excuse to think of him as somehow less dangerous than he obviously was.

The thing was, Lotor kept going out of his way to be _nice._ He saw Lance struggling with the new sword from of his bayard, and showed him a few tricks. He was even complimentary, and Lance...really liked having someone praise his efforts, especially since Shiro was behaving so strangely.

He wasn’t the only one to get Lotor’s surprisingly cooperative attentions. Lotor dove into helping Pidge and Hunk with an engineering problem, displaying a remarkable amount of knowledge of the subject. He’d helped Matt with his cryptography, providing some of the Imperial codes he still knew and some ideas for what kinds of modifications might be made. He worked with Kolivan to pinpoint targets for the Blade.

If he intended to betray them, he was certainly taking the long way around it. Lance wasn’t sure what to make of that, really. All he knew for sure was that when Lotor pressed against his back to correct his sword stance, it sent his heart fluttering in his chest, and seeing him put out an effort to help the coalition made Lance feel warm and fuzzy.

The truth of the matter was that he _wanted_ to like Lotor, because Lotor was gorgeous and clever and kind of everything Lance wanted. And that was a _problem._

 

* * *

 

Lance needed as many distractions as possible from all the feelings he was feeling, quite frankly, so he dragged himself down to Pidge’s workshop to watch her tinker with her latest project.

The problem, of course, was that Lance got started talking about their handsome white-haired problem, because Pidge mentioned him helping her out (directing her to some weird material she was having the time of her life fiddling with, apparently) and, once he started, he couldn’t _stop._

"It's stupid," Lance said, waving a hand, "how perfect he is. Like, just, so stupid, I hate it so much, I hate his perfect face."

"Uh-huh," Pidge said, without looking up. That was fine, because Lance would actually prefer she not look him in the face while he was going off about how into Lotor he was and how upset he was about it.

"Like, there was this story I heard? About this sculptor, who got commissioned for a statue of Satan, but it was so hot the church couldn't have it," he was barely thinking about what was coming out of his mouth, frankly, and that was probably going to be his downfall, "so they got his brother to make a second one, and it was like, even hotter? I think Lotor might be the even hotter statue come to life, or something, it's _ridiculous._ "

"...Lance," Pidge said, and she set down whatever she was working on, and he didn’t have to look up to see that she was giving him a very judgemental look, because he could sort of _feel_ the judgement crawling down his back, “do you listen to yourself when you talk?”

“...Yes?” Lance said. Part of him suspected that was the wrong answer, somehow.

“So you just heard yourself compare the dude to _a statue of the Devil come to life,_ ” Pidge said.

“Uh, yeah,” Lance said, “that’s sorta the problem, he’s like...purple sexy Satan.”

“ _Purple sexy Satan.”_ Pidge repeated, voice almost awed. “That’s. That’s something else, Lance.”

“It’s true!” He waved his hands above his head, frustratedly. “Have you _looked at him?”_

“Not my type,” Pidge said, shrugging her shoulders. She did, however, lean back in her chair and take a moment to consider. “I guess he’s not, like, awful, facewise?”

“Ugh, you wouldn’t get it,” Lance said, and he flopped back against her desk with a loud huff. “Whatever. Forget I said anything.”

“I’d really, really like to,” Pidge said dryly, but she turned back to her project, and Lance figured that was dropped well enough.

 

* * *

 

When they’d arrived on Luitera in response to a distress call from a group allied with the rebels Matt brought into the coalition, it was pretty much already a clusterfuck, to put it mildly. The village they’d been called to was ablaze, with Galra soldiers and sentries moving through it and slaughtering indiscriminately.

There was no room for Voltron, too many civilians and too little space, so it was on foot, and Lotor furiously insisted on coming with them. Ground assaults were a little outside their usual playbook, but Lance could be into it, especially with the Blade at their backs.

The village was built into a shallow crater, rock walls rising around it, and Lance was glad for it because the tiered rock gave him some really damn good places to get comfortable and start sniping. The perch was perfect; he had a clear view of most of the village,  and while there were some places blocked by buildings he couldn’t cover, he could do a lot, and he _did._ Soldiers and sentires fell under his shots, and he could see them starting to panic, looking around for whatever was dropping them.

It didn’t feel _good,_ exactly, to know that he was terrifying people, but it felt... _something_ , that was for sure.

Right as he was starting to feel pretty pleased with his contributions to the mission, though, was right about when everything went to hell.

Apparently, someone had figured out where he was shooting from, because a Galra soldier came dropping down onto his perch, sword drawn, and Lance was forced into a close-quarters fight for his life.

Lance knew he was getting better at hand to hand fighting, they certainly practiced it enough, but he definitely couldn't match up to someone who was a skilled master of it, especially not when he was panicking too much to focus on changing his bayard into its new sword from, and he was doing far too much dodging backwards to get off a shot. Part of the problem, too, was that he had so little space to work with, with the cliff he'd rappelled down to get here on one side and the drop down into the valley on the other.

His perfect sniper perch was now a death trap.

"Shit shit shit," Lance gasped, and he'd never been gladder for his shield except maybe in the very first training exercise against the gladiator when they all got their asses kicked. It was pretty much the only thing between him and a very angry Galra soldier, and Lance did not want to find out what would happen if he lost it. "Guys, a little help!"

"We're on our way," Shiro said, and Lance wanted to pretend that it was reassuring but wow, it really was not, because he was pretty sure they weren't going to get there in time.

His opponent was quick, and a leg snapped out under his shield, taking Lance off his feet and sending him tumbling a few feet. The tumble gave him some space and a chance to try and scramble back up, but it wasn't enough, and he swore the Galra soldier was going to skewer him--

And then something drew their attention away, and up, and Lance turned and looked, and holy _shit._

Lotor dropped down from the cliff above, and Lance found that for a moment he couldn't breathe. He looked like an avenging angel, and for a moment, when he landed in a crouch at the base of the cliff, Lance swore the play of light made his shadow look like it had _wings_.

Lucifer _was_ the best and brightest of the angels before he fell, after all.

“Get _away_ from him,” Lotor snarled.

He leapt into the attack, and the soldier seemed startled and confused, like just like Lance, they couldn't quite believe what they were seeing. Lotor moved with the grace of and ferocity of a striking serpent, quick slashes and stabs that were hard to _follow,_ let alone imagine _parrying._

Finally, he slipped under the stunned soldier's guard and drove his sword through their chest, and slammed his foot into their stomach, sending them flying off the end of his sword and over the edge of the cliff.

He looked _stunning,_ haloed by the flickering light of the fires below them, and when he turned to Lance, expression so much softer than it had been just a moment before, Lance was more certain than ever that he was witnessing an angel fallen to the material plane. Lotor bent and offered him a hand to help him to his feet, and his eyes flicked up and down Lance, clearly checking for injuries.

"Are you alright?" He asked, and Lance nodded, not trusting himself to speak--or, more specifically, not trusting himself to not say something incredibly stupid like _"please kiss me"_ , because that was definitely what he was thinking. "Good," Lotor said, and he let go of Lance's hand, which was for some irrational reason disappointing.

"Lance!" Hunk's voice crackled over the comms. "You okay, buddy?"

"I'm fine," Lance said finally, because he was responding to someone other than Lotor, and that was a lot easier than trying to collect his thoughts when directly addressing the strange angel in front of him. “Lotor covered me.”

“Thank you, Lotor,” Shiro said, and Lotor shrugged his shoulders, even though none of them could see.

“An ally was in distress. I certainly wasn’t going to leave him to die.” He made it sound so simple. Maybe it was, but _“an ally was in distress”_ really did not properly account for how _vicious_ Lotor had been in jumping in to protect him.

Maybe Lance was reading too much into things. Maybe he just _wanted_ Lotor to want to protect him, specifically.

“I still owe you one,” Lance said, and he reached out to rest a hand on Lotor’s arm and squeeze it. “So thanks, man.” He was pretty sure he _wasn’t_ imagining the way Lotor’s cheeks flushed blue-violet, or that he coughed and looked away. Definitely not imagining _that,_ nope.

“You are welcome,” he said, and then he glanced at the jump down, like he was calculating whether or not he could do it. “Another time, Lance,” he said, and he leapt down so gracefully Lance could have sworn the wings he’d seen framing Lotor’s shadow weren’t his mind playing tricks after all.

 

* * *

 

The thing about attributing all those devilish qualities to Lotor, Lance realized, was that it had made him forget they had a far, far more dangerous enemy lurking in the shadows.

The reminder came like a slap in the face, when a massive Galra fleet descended on Luitera before they could pull out.

A massive Galra fleet led by Zarkon himself.

 _“I am making a one-time offer,”_ Zarkon had said, on the transmission he broadcast to the castleship. _“Bring me my son, and I will allow you to escape alive.”_

Lotor had left, and Lance didn’t blame him. Standing around and listening to other people discuss your fate didn’t exactly sound _pleasant._ Lance himself barely had the stomach for the discussion, and he’d gotten out of there as quickly as he could. Even the possibility didn’t sit well with him, putting Lotor on the chopping block so they could maybe get some kind of nebulous advantage or negotiate a peace deal that was going to be violated as soon as Zarkon was done with whatever horrible fate he had in mind for his traitorous son.

He ended up in Red’s hangar, curled up at her feet. It wasn’t quite the same as being with Blue, because Red wasn’t quite as gentle as his old Lion, but she was still warmly, fiercely protective, and sitting with her sort of felt like curling up with a very big, very protective tiger. Red, particularly, wanted to know if her cub’s distress could be soothed by her fighting anything, and seemed almost put out when Lance told her no, but he appreciated the thought.

He wasn’t sure how reassuring it really was that she was very insistent that she would gladly fight the rest of the Paladins if it made him feel better, but she was _trying,_ and that was...something. Mostly, the comfort came in being in her presence, and in her not judging his tangled pile of emotions about Lotor. She seemed to find it entertaining, made a comment about her _last_ cub having trouble with that sort of thing, too, and Lance hardly had to think too hard to guess who Keith might have had a whole lot of feelings about.

Lance let himself bask in Red’s warm presence, for long enough that he lost track of time, and maybe drifted off to sleep.

He was woken by a mental nudge from Red.

 _Check the Sincline Ship,_ she rumbled in his mind, and Lance shot up, feeling a brief shot of panic. The Sincline Ship. Lotor’s ship. The Lions seemed to have a sense for it, probably because they were made of the same trans-reality comet material, and Lance wasn’t about to ask _why_ she wanted him to check in it. Red didn’t ask for things for no reason.

He booked it for the hangar where they’d asked Lotor to keep his ship, and he was only so surprised to find Lotor himself there, leaning against the ship, with a bag tossed over his shoulders.

“Going somewhere?” Lance asked. Lotor tensed, and spun to look at him, and Lance gave him a half-smile.

“Yes,” Lotor said bluntly, and there wasn’t even a hint of amusement on his face. “Why shouldn’t I? You would be fools not to take my father’s deal, but unfortunately I am not actually _fond_ of the possibility of dying, and I’m not quite self-sacrificial enough to offer myself up to save you all.”

“We’re not gonna sell you out,” Lance said, and he hoped how offended he was at the notion showed through. “We’re not the Empire, we’re not gonna screw over our allies to save our own skins—” Lotor interrupted him, because he actually started _laughing,_ and normally Lance was pretty sure the sound might have been comparable to something magical, but right then, it just sounded bitter, and sad, and tired, and like there was no humor in it at all.

“Oh, please,” Lotor said, voice heavy with sarcasm, “do _not_ try to fool me with your ridiculous notions of heroism. No one is better than that, Lance, and I was a fool to think Voltron could be.” There was a tightness in his voice, too, that made Lance’s chest ache. “Everyone is out for themselves, ultimately.” He glanced over at his ship. “This will not be the first time, and I hardly take it personally. We all do what we must to survive.”

“Where would you even _go?”_ Lance asked. “And how do you expect to get out?”

“There are reaches of the universe my father has not yet touched,” Lotor said. “They are few, and far between, but they exist. Or perhaps I will disappear onto one of the liberated planets.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I spent years in exile. The life of a fugitive is not unfamiliar. As for how I expect to get out, a small ship is far less noticeable than your castleship or the Lions. I can slide between the cruisers, more or less undetected. And if you are especially lucky, perhaps I will draw the Empire’s attention, and some of them will break off to chase me, and you’ll have your window to escape.”

“Or you could stay with us, and we all get out of this _together,”_ Lance said. Lotor shook his head.

“You don’t need to convince me of anything to soothe your conscience, Lance,” he said, and his shoulders sagged, and he looked sad, and tired, and yet he somehow still looked like a marble angel, even if this one was a picture of grief. “As I said, I do not take it personally.”

“I’m not trying to soothe my conscience,” Lance said, and he moved closer to Lotor, reaching out to rest a hand on his arm again, like he’d done on the surface of the planet earlier. “I’m not gonna _let_ them hand you over. I told Shiro as much. I’ll say it again, over and over again, because _that’s not what we do._ We’re _Voltron._ You may not think so, but we _are_ better than that.”

“Why bother defending me?” Lotor asked, and his confusion was more than obvious. “If this is because you feel as if you owe me, I assure you, you do _not—”_

“No,” Lance said, “that’s not why. I’m defending you because it’d be _wrong,_ for us to sell you out. I couldn’t be okay with that. Yeah, you saved me, and that’s part of why I’m not gonna be okay with selling you out, and yeah, there’s other reasons, like—” Lance hesitated, and shook his head, “not important. The point is, sure, I’ve got personal reasons for not wanting to let you go running off into space, and for not wanting to hand you over to Zarkon, but the big one is that I’d never be able to call myself a hero again if I let something like that happen.”

Lotor was silent for a long moment, and then something like a smile teased its way across his face.

He leaned down, and his lips were on Lance’s, and Lance had a long moment of not being sure what to make of that before he decided to stop worrying about it and reached up to twist his fingers in Lotor’s hair, leaning into the kiss eagerly. He held it for a long moment, and then Lotor pulled away and Lance let him go, but only so far.

“Not that I haven’t been wanting you to do that for a _while,”_ Lance said, “but, um. Why?”

“You are the most foolishly noble person I have ever known,” Lotor said, “and ancestors help me, I almost believe you when you say you won’t let them hand me over. And because I have _also_ wanted to do that for quite some time.” He exhaled, briefly, and it came with a small, more genuine laugh. “I will stay, and I will trust you.”

Lance dragged Lotor down into another kiss.

He might have been some kind of fallen angel sent to walk the material plane, but he couldn’t help remembering a quote from a poem he’d read, once.

_“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”_

He would be glad to help Lotor get there.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr, at [noirsongbird!](http://noirsongbird.tumblr.com/)


End file.
